I eventually learned that silence didn’t always mean something was wrong.
Sometimes it simply meant he’d spent twelve hours carrying things no ordinary person should ever have to carry.
When we first got married, I thought I could get used to it.
I was wrong.
You don’t really get used to loving someone whose job requires them to run toward the danger everyone else is running away from.
You simply learn how to live with the fear.
Or, at least, you learn how to hide it.
Tyler was good at hiding his fear too.
He was the kind of man who could come home with a bruise across his ribs and casually say, “It’s nothing.”
He once came home with three stitches in his forearm.
“It’s just a scratch,” he’d told me.
“That’s not what the doctor called it.”
“The doctor is dramatic.”
Another time, part of a ceiling collapsed during a call and Tyler came home complaining more about his ruined boots than his bruised shoulder.
That was Tyler.
He didn’t like people worrying about him.
He especially didn’t like me worrying about him.
But there was one thing I had learned over the years.
Tyler loved birthdays.
He just didn’t like admitting it.
